Friday Mailbag: Why Treat a First Author Like a Second Fiddle?

Last Friday two immigrants from India were shot at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kansas. The two friends were enjoying drinks after work when another patron, a white man, began showering them with ethnic slurs and suggesting that they did not belong in the United States. The man was thrown out of the bar, but returned soon after and shot the two men, killing one of them.

The attack was termed a “hate crime” in Times stories, to the consternation of several readers.

As someone who grew up in a small town in Middle America, I have a (hopefully) straightforward question: Why is this shooting not be discussed as a potential act of domestic terrorism (or more provocatively “nativist extremist terrorism”)? When immigration is the major political issue of the day, and the statements made by this individual clearly reflect an attempt to inspire fear that would affect a group of people, and when the connection between that group of people and a current hot-button political issue is pretty obvious, why is this not an act of terrorism? Imagine all the circumstances of this were reversed: If the same act had been committed by a person from another country, who was a member of a racial/religious group that was in the minority in America, and this person had targeted white Americans and shouted “Death to your country” instead of “Go back to your country” this would be on the front page as an act of likely terrorism. So why is this being treated so differently? Obviously, I care because the victim could easily have been me or my children.

Vikaas Sohal, San Francisco

I am very disappointed that this article described the shooting as “a Possible Hate Crime” instead of calling it “a possible terrorist attack.” Terrorist attacks by alt-right or white supremacists have consistently been downplayed relative to terrorist attacks by Muslims. Our journalists and politicians need to start treating them as equal evils. If our alt-right government doesn’t want to treat this terrorist attack as a terrorist attack, that doesn’t mean that the NYTimes should do the same.

Jason Dumelie, New York, N.Y.

We brought these concerns to the national editor, Marc Lacey. Here’s his reply:

I do not consider what happened in Kansas to be some run-of-the-mill shooting. No way. It was horrific. It had an ugly racial dimension and it turned into a major diplomatic incident. And I happen to share the reader’s personal concern — I might have been a victim too if I had been in that bar at that time. But which label best applies to the crime is more a question for law enforcement than The Times. Was this a hate crime? Was it terrorism? There are specific legal conditions that must be met for those labels to be applied. I can assure this concerned reader that we’ll keep on top of this case and pass along all that we find.

The public editor’s take: I’m with Lacey on this issue. I see no intention on the part of editors to minimize this act in calling the gunman’s action a possible hate crime, unless further information surfaces to suggest a revisiting of that term.

Revisiting a topic we addressed in the last mailbag, a few readers were perplexed with two recent obits, each for a Jewish man. The issue? One obit noted that the deceased was Jewish while the other didn’t.

I’ve long been puzzled by the seemingly arbitrary mention of the family background of subjects in Times’ obituaries. This is particularly striking in the case of people of Jewish ancestry. Two obituaries this week illustrate the point. Here is Alan Colmes: “Mr. Colmes, a Brooklyn-born grandson of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, worked in radio and as a stand-up comic before Fox News recruited him.” And here is Kenneth Arrow: “Kenneth Joseph Arrow was born on Aug. 23, 1921, in New York City.” There is no mention of Arrow’s parents, who were both Romanian-Jewish immigrants to the United States, a fact that is easily found and seems more relevant to his obituary than Colmes’ grandparents to his. There are many other examples of this kind of contrast. I wonder what the criteria are for including information about an obituary subject’s religious background and ancestry.

Mr. Sampson is correct to note that we were inconsistent on this point in the obituaries about Alan Colmes and Kenneth Arrow. Our rule of thumb has been to mention religious faith or affiliation when we think it’s relevant to an individual’s public life or upbringing. It would be relevant, for example, if a politician frequently cited faith as informing his or her public views, or if an individual told biographers that religion had been a formative influence, as recounted in a specific episode, say. Jewish subjects of obituaries often present another consideration, having to do with culture and history as well as religious faith. Many of the Jews we write about were immigrants or the descendants of immigrants from Europe, and many indeed left because of persecution there, particularly during the Nazi era. In those cases their Judaism is relevant to recalling that immigrant experience. Further, many readers have made the point that an immigrant’s Judaism is important to note when his or her roots were in culturally distinct and often segregated Jewish communities in those countries. Identifying subjects simply as Russian immigrants or Lithuanian immigrants is misleading, or only half the story, they say. So it has been our practice to identify Jewish immigrants in this way. We should have with Professor Arrow as well.

The public editor’s take: Another thoughtful answer, this time from the obits editor.

Readers also took issue with a description in a magazine piece this week: “Research in 2015 by Angus Deaton, a Nobel laureate in economics, with his wife, Anne Case, showed that the mortality gap between college-educated whites and non-college-educated whites had been widening rapidly since 1999.”

I went and looked up the actual reference here, which is to a piece published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I discovered that in fact Anne Case (the wife) is the first author on this paper and that she is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton — not too shabby in her own right. So I wonder why was the reference here not to Case and Deaton (two VERY accomplished academics) vs to Deaton, in this case the 2nd author, and his WIFE — the little woman — rather than his colleague. Many couples have professional lives which intertwine (mine did with my husband) — every time you identify her as “the wife” you diminish her own accomplishments which in this case appear to be equally remarkable. Granted she’s not a Nobel winner, but….

Kathe Fox, Baltimore

I am very disappointed. First, Dr. Case, not Dr. Deaton, was the lead author on this research paper. Second, citing a researcher’s marital status is irrelevant and disparaging in any case. Would you dream of saying, “Angus Deaton, who at 5’3” is a very short guy, won the Nobel Prize...”? And, finally, the automatic reordering of names to put Dr. Deaton ahead of Dr. Case was widely discussed at the time, including in The New York Times. See Justin Wolfers’s article, “Even Famous Female Economists Get No Respect.”

We went to Jake Silverstein, the editor of the magazine, for a response.

Yeah this was our error, one we deeply regret. It’s certainly not a matter of policy for us to have handled it this way. Just a mistake on our part. We all feel bad about it, and deserve the angry response from readers. I would, however, defend the decision to include the fact of them being married. That seems like interesting information to share with the reader. But obviously she should have been listed first, with her full title, and their marital status should have been presented as something defining BOTH of them, not just her in relation to him. This is precisely the sort of small but very consequential error that we catch and fix in editing all the time and I don’t have a good explanation for why we didn’t in this case, other than to say that we messed up.

The public editor’s take: Well put by an editor who seems to appreciate how mistakes like this can go over with readers. I’m writing more about the dearth of female leaders at The Times and how that may impact coverage in my Sunday column. Nice to see a male editor sensitive to the matter, too.

The article posits a fictional couple Samuel and Felicity Taxpayer. Then it gave them an income of $190,000, putting them in the top 7% of American households. I love the NYTimes, but decisions like that (which reminds me of an older absurd article on the hardships of living on $500,000 in New York) are the reason so many Americans think the NYTimes is out of touch with America. Please encourage the article writer to think a little more carefully about how absurd that type of salary sounds to the average American and maybe try and offer more concrete guidance to people with normal incomes?

Nick Eubank, Stanford, Calif.

We took the feedback to the business editor, Dean Murphy, who explained the income bracket choice.

Thanks for the heads-up. This is a standard feature we do every year as part of our special tax coverage. It is a good idea to mix it up, so next year we will make an effort to illustrate an example from a different tax bracket. I’ve passed this along to the editor who handles this coverage.

Finally, several astute readers again noted this week (see last week’s mailbag) that The Times may lack military experience in its rank and file.

When the Times mentions combat medals received by soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, often the recipient is described as “winning” or having “won” the medal. This assumes our military view combat as a contest. It seems particularly odd when the recipient is said to have “won” a Purple Heart. May I suggest “awarded” instead? This goes, too, for medals for heroism or bravery. As a veteran, I was not out to win medals.

Peter Gavrilovich

A small thing, perhaps, but editors should have caught the fact that one does not “win” a Purple Heart or a Bronze Star. One is awarded a Purple Heart when he is killed or wounded in action with a hostile enemy force. He earns a Bronze Star after specific evaluations of his performance. Military action in war is not the same as garnering a prize on a TV award show.

Arthur Arguedas, Santa Fe, N.M.

The line came in an obit for Joseph Wapner, the star of “The People’s Court.” It has since been updated to read: “He received the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for his bravery and was honorably discharged in 1945.”

The public editor’s take: I think these readers make a fair point.The Times’s stylebook specifically warns against using “win” for military honors: “Note that military decorations are not won; they are earned, received or awarded.” I’m glad to see the sentence in the obit was reworded, especially since an obituary is a historic record of a person’s life.

Till next week, dear readers. Stay vigilant.

Each Friday, Evan Gershkovich, in the office of public editor Liz Spayd, surfaces some of the more thoughtful and provocative feedback that comes in — some of which is edited for clarity and length. To be featured here, email the public editor at public@nytimes.com. Follow the public editor on Twitter @spaydl.